


Schicksal

by LiteralGod



Category: Pacific Rim (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon Disabled Character, Car Accidents, Newton/Herman if u squint, hermann's dad is kinda in here, hermann's tragic backstory, uprising foreshadowing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-11
Updated: 2018-04-11
Packaged: 2019-04-21 09:59:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,286
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14282487
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LiteralGod/pseuds/LiteralGod
Summary: das Schicksal(n.)- German- fate, destiny, doom, fortuneHermann chases the rabbit.





	Schicksal

**Author's Note:**

> I rewatched the first PacRim after seeing Uprising in theaters and I got inspired
> 
> This was just supposed to be a self-indulgent thing about Hermann's leg injury backstory, but it kinda grew.
> 
> Also, sorry if there are any mistakes or if I need to tag something, please tell me so I can fix it, this wasn't beta read.

“You ready for this?” Called Newt over his shoulder, already feeling like he was going to shake out of his own skin. He had been in a jittery, manic state ever since his fateful drift with the first kaiju brain, and it was now reaching a fever pitch.

“Oh yes, yes, of course.” Hermann muttered behind him, sounding more scared then Newt had ever heard him. A flash of concern flitted through Newt’s brain as they got into position, but there was no time to dwell on it, the fate of the world depended on them.

“Initiating neural handshake in 5, 4, 3, 2, 1.” Was the last thing Hermann heard before Newt pressed the button and everything went blue.

Images flashed in rapid succession in front of him, dancing a crazed jig before being shoved out of the way in favor of a new one, faster than even Newt’s brain could keep up with. He saw his own memories first, a child playing with his uncle, catching bugs and running around, then teaching his students at university, many of them older than him at the time, of getting his first tattoos, the pain and the determination that came with them, his eye exam, all important times in his life, things that had come to him during the first drift. I was only when he saw the new memories that things began to slip out of control.

These memories had to be Hermann’s, there was a little boy playing with a model airplane, watching it intently as he flew it around in circles, then the same boy, white socks pulled up to his knees, writing furiously on a chalkboard in front of a classroom, saying the equations out loud, then, curled into a ball in the corner, shoulders hunched and shaking, his socks starting to slip down his skinny shins. Newt was beginning to find his footing amongst the torrent of his lab partner’s memories when the scene changed again, but this time, it was not tinged blue like the others.

At first, Newt thought somehow that the drift had been terminated. He felt the rumble of a car under him, and his first instinct said that he had passed out and was being transported back to the Shatterdome. One look around, though, and that was clearly not the case. For one, he was certainly not in Japan anymore. The scene outside was of a distinctly european setting, quaint and sunny. The other clue was that next to him, in the driver’s seat was Hermann.

Newt blinked, squinting through the impressive crack in his glasses. Hermann looked much younger. His hair did not have its distinctive undercut, and there were significantly fewer frown lines on his face, even scrunched up in anger as it was. He was also driving like a mad man.

“Her-?” Newt tried, but his voice cracked.

“Hermann?” He said again, louder this time, but the Hermann next to him did not seem to notice, just wiped furiously at his eyes with his sleeve.

“Hermann! What’s going on?” A sudden realization struck him and he tried to grab Hermann’s shoulder, but found that he couldn’t move, paralyzed where he sat.

“Hermann! This is the RABIT! You need to let it go! Hermann!” Newt yelled, his panic beginning to catch up to him. Still, Hermann drove, eyes set dead ahead, mouth pulled tight into a grimace.

“Hermann! The kaiju, we have to focus!-” Newt began again, but cut off when, from behind Hermann’s head, he saw another car barrelling their way.

“ _Hermann_!” Newt screamed, and finally, Hermann’s eyes widened in realization, but it was not Newton he turned to look at.

Again, the scene changed, Newt felt the ground give up under him, until suddenly he was standing up. The change knocked the breath out of him, and it took him another minute to gather his bearings again. This time he was standing in a hospital room, white enough to blind and the smell chemical enough to burn. Laying in front of him was Hermann again, but his expression this time was dead. His face was pale and gaunt, and the bedsheets barely rose and fell. His hair was slick with grease and falling into his face, but he didn’t bother to fix it. Next to Newt stood another, older man, a man who Newt recognized from photos on the news as Lars Gottlieb. His face was stoic, showing even less emotion that Hermann’s, if he even had any emotions to show. In Lars’ hands was a cane. He was looking down at the Hermann in the bed, even though Hermann did not look back at him.

“Es tut mir Leid.” _I’m sorry._ He held the cane out.

This time the memory fizzled out slowly, gradually fading back into a shocking blue, and making way for one last image of a slightly older looking Hermann than the one who had been in the car. This Hermann was leaning on a cane and opening a letter from the newly-formed PPDC. Like the ones that came before, this memory was shaky and saturated with kaiju blue, almost as if nothing had happened between it and the memory of his childhood. Quickly, that changed as well, but this time into something arguably worse.

Newt could only watch in horror again as he was assaulted by the mere _presence_ of the kaju in his head. In front of his eyes, or rather, etched into the inside of his skull, he could see them, the precursors. Their many eyes seemed to pierce him physically, their stares as hard to stomach as their frantic chittering voices, grating like nails dragging down a chalkboard, wiping away whatever was written there. He saw them piece together kaiju like one would sew fabric, muscle and flesh melding to bone, sinew snapping into place, enormous bulging eyes opening their slimy double lids to the world, but not _his_ world, oh no. This world was disgustingly, suffocatingly _blue_ , and in the sky was a massive tunnel, rapidly growing closer until he, no, the kaiju went inside it. He could feel the breach around him, scanning him, ready to snap shut if it found what didn't belong and Newt found himself praying for the first time in years

‘Please, god, if you do exist, let me through, let me through, _let me through_ -!’

When he opened his eyes he was back in the real world, so bright and vivid and blessedly real that he felt a second of shame for mistaking the pale, warped memory world for it. From his lungs spewed an uncontainable coughing fit, before he remembered Hermann standing beside him.

“Are you okay?” He yelled over the sound of the siren’s still blaring in the background, shoving the PONS helmet off of him.

“Yes, of course. I’m completely fine.” Hermann quipped, despite the fact he was shaking like he was having a seizure, trying to remove his own device. Then, suddenly, without warning, he fell to the side and puked into a nearby toilet, cane thrown off to the side. His still shaking arm reached out to Newton behind him, who handed over a handkerchief.

“The drift.” Hermann gasped, frantic, turning around to Newt.

“You saw it?”

“Yeah.”

“Did you?”

“Yeah! L-listen, we have to warn them!” He was so shaken he could barely get his words out “The jaegers - T-the breach - _The plan_!” At this Hermann looked him dead in the eye.

“ _It’s not going to work_.” And in the back of Newt’s mind, at the base of his skull, he heard a noise, like an excited whisper, almost like in an adjacent room, someone was dragging their nails down a chalkboard.

**Author's Note:**

> Im German but you wouldn't know it with how bad I am at the language lmao


End file.
